This German was accorded first attention, while our own boys had to be content with being next in line. We could not kick, however, as the doctors and nurses stretched their ability to do for others to the utmost. After our prisoner had had his hunger appeased with the “Ei,” he seemed content to die, for that is just what he did. From what I could learn, his injury had been a bad one, a large piece of shell having pierced his chest.
I felt sure, when I saw him carried out, that my turn was next. Then I discovered that the number of my cot was 13, so—recalling the many escapes from death I had had and how this number had been concerned in them, my hopes for recovery went soaring high.
Now I was recovering enough to take an interest in other cases in the ward, and one in particular, a Royal Irish Fusilier, in the cot opposite me. He had forty-eight bullet wounds in his body. He had already been in this ward six weeks, so I knew then I wasn’t the worst case there. My temperature had now dropped to 100, and I was informed that an orderly would bring my clothes and get me ready for a journey. This meant Blighty!
A couple of the Royal Army Medical Corps men came into the tent and very gently laid me in a stretcher, then carried me out along narrow pathways bordered by neatly whitewashed stones and rows of double-linked marquee tents with similar neat arrangements of stones at the entrances. There seemed to be a city of tents on the Rouen Champ de Course (race course), and outside of it too, as far as my eyes could see.
At the end farthest from the cook-house huts, I noticed a large boiler arrangement with a funnel sticking up at one end and on the door some large print, but I could not read the lettering. I asked one of the men what the object was. I was informed that it was used for disinfecting Tommy’s clothes and exterminating the cooties that they sheltered. Tommy gets a change to hospital clothing as soon as he enters the base hospital. On taking a second look at the sign, I made out “Germ-Hun Exterminator.” So when Tommy gets his clothes out of “dock” (hospital), and grumbles at the R. A. M. C. orderlies when he finds his collection of souvenirs depleted, they promptly put the blame on the “Germ-Hun.”
As soon as I was placed in an ambulance, a tag was fastened to my lapel and I was ready for the road along with other lucky chaps. It seemed as if we were hardly settled when we arrived at the railway station. An ambulance train was waiting here for us, and before many minutes had elapsed we found ourselves en route for Le Havre. We arrived here the same night and were placed aboard the S.S. Asturias.
When we were about mid-channel, a torpedo from a German submarine just cleared the bow of our ship by a few feet. Even a hospital ship is a target for the missiles of the enemy.
We arrived next morning at Southampton without further occurrences of moment.
Each patient was asked where he wished to be sent. It was natural that each should give his home district. We were placed in rows in the large shed on the wharf, and our destination marked on our tickets. We were now ready for our next part of the journey.
Suddenly my attention was attracted by vigorous exclamations. From the patient in the stretcher next to me I heard vociferous “bly’me-ing” in a very strong cockney accent. I asked the disturber what he was making all the row about.